1. Can it be done?
Building a Successful Business Around Open
Licensed Software and Content
Presenters:
Brian Whitmer, co-founder and Chief Learning Officer, Instructure
Mike Zackrison, Sr. Director, Partnerships, Instructure

2. A little about us.

3. About Instructure
Cool Facts:
- Founded in 2008 by Brian
Whitmer and Devlin Daley
- 500+ college, university and
K-12 customers
- 8+ million students & teachers
- 250+ employees
- Canvas is open source
www.instructure.com
www.canvas.net

4. About Us
• Brian Whitmer
– Co-founded Instructure
– Wrote lots of Canvas
code
– Started Canvas open
source and the
community
• Mike Zackrison
– Commercialized uPortal
through Luminis product
line
– Former executive at
Unicon and rSmart
supporting uPortal,
Sakai, and Kuali
solutions
– Former lead product
manager Kuali Student
– Partnered with lots of
open companies

5. Our frame of reference.

6. What do we mean by open?
• Openly licensed IP
– Software*
• uPortal, Sakai, Kuali, Moodle, Dspace, Canvas, others mostly in HE
– Content
• Creative Commons
• OER
• Examples abound at this conference 
*Most of our experience is on the software side

7. Key Concepts
Community
Sustainability
Production vs. adoption

8. Typical Business
Opportunities
Software
• Expertise
• Development
• Support
• Hosting
• Value-added UX, delivery
models
• Solution integration
Content
• Expertise
• Development
• Support
• Curation
• Assembly / mixing
• Discoverability / distribution
• Solution integration
• Augmentation

9. Lessons Learned

10. You get to define success.

11. Get involved. Play nice.

12. Ask a high enough price.

13. Reinvest in the community.

14. Sales and marketing matter.

15. Timing is important.

16. Funding strategy matters.

17. Advice for the community
• Identify collaborative strategic partners
• Pick fewer of them
• Encourage them to participate in development process
• Support them with your dollars